


The Great Mortality

by Indiana_J



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-23
Updated: 2015-07-22
Packaged: 2018-04-10 18:13:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4402166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Indiana_J/pseuds/Indiana_J
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The plague has swept through France, leaving most of her people dead or dying of the illness. Constance finds herself one of the few living in Paris and she struggles to carry her burden to the coast. To potential safety and to her d’Artagnan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smaragdbird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smaragdbird/gifts).



The palace was silent and still except for the sound of Constance sprinting through the marble lined walls. Almost all the windows had been lined with as much black mourning fabric as the palace had been able to gather, giving the inside a dark, murky feel no matter the time of day.

She stumbled on the stairs and fell hard upon the landing. Constance pressed her forehead to the floor as she struggled to control her breathing.

The floor felt extra cool to her skin. Was her body exerted from her mad dash through the palace? Or was her skin flushed from something else, something burrowing and growing...

"No. Get up," she breathed. "Get. Up!"

Sheer determination, and perhaps a dash of fear, saw Constance to her feet again. She ran slower this time, with an eye on her path for she knew there would be no help if she fell and injured herself.

Her heart dropped in her chest when she saw that no guards were stationed outside the Queen's bedchambers. "Oh please, no," she gasped, shoving open the large doors with much effort.

There was no other way to describe the once lush and comfortable rooms as a tomb. The curtains that blocked the light from the rest of the palace hung over the windows to Queen Anne's room. No lights were lit and the fireplace held no fire; despite that, the room was overly room.

And the smell. Constance gagged but forced herself to walk forward. She had become accustomed to the smell. There was no escape from the scent of dying flesh in Paris. There had been no escape for weeks now.

The poster bed lay before her, drapes pulled tightly shut but she knew what would lay beyond them and she cried. For her country, for her Queen and for herself, for they had become friends and she'd been hoping ...

Hoping to not find her gentle, strong friend riddled with swollen spots, crusted lips, eyes and ears. Hoping to find the coolness of a body not ravaged by fever. Hoping to find life, not death, among the city of the dead.

The sharp sting of tears caused her to stop in place. Constance blinked them back, surprised that she still had tears left to cry even after all the death she’d seen since the plague had ravaged their country. But then again, this was her Queen.

This was _Anne_.

She was moving again, heading towards the still bed when a noise caught her attention. Outside of the noise Constance had been making, this was the first sound she’d heard after breaching the front gates.

It was the cry of a child.

Constance turned in a circle, trying to locate it, wondering if she was imagining things again but then she saw the door and she remembered why it was there.

The Queen’s room had a door in the back and Constance slammed her shoulder against it, crying in frustration when it refused to budge. She could hear the muffled sobbing through the door - it had to be the Dauphin. No other child would be sleeping so close to her royal highness, even in the dire times.

Constance hadn’t even dreamed, hadn’t even held out a moment of _hope_ , that the Dauphin was alive. She’d seen the illness cull healthy adults like they were stalks of wheat. That he was stirred a hope in her that had slowly suffocated through endless funerals.

If she could get to him, she could head to the town the note in her pocket instructed her to go to. If she could only _open the damned door_ she screamed, throwing herself against the door again, again, again, again …

And she was through, stumbling into the darkened entire as the door slid open just enough. She found herself tripping again, though it wasn’t her body failing her this time.

Groaning, she reached down to untangle her feet and couldn’t stop the scream as her hands brushed something clammy and rotten. Constance jerked back, freeing herself and then the tears wouldn’t stop.

They wouldn’t stop as she gathered the equally sobbing Dauphin in her arms. They didn’t stop as she stepped over the stiffened corpse of the man she had called King.

Or as she fled the tomb that had once the jewel of Paris.


	2. Chapter 2

The sword was heavy. For the first time since Constance had convinced d’Artagnan to teach her how to fight, the blade seemed unwieldy and too big for her hands. She stared at the blood that dripped from the tip, following the liquid down until it hit the body at her feet.

Bandits.

Of course, even now, there were bandits.

She swallowed the bile and couldn’t help but think how ironic it was that she didn’t do it for the men at her feet but because …

There was no memory of the fight.

No. Memory.

The last thing Constance remembered … she swayed and squinted, trying to think. Yes. It was … maybe? No, she remembered.

She had been riding the horse behind her. Riding with the now sated and calm Dauphin of France. It had been a calm journey but then …

The attack. The defense. The death.

And she remembered none of it.

Constance felt her knees go weak and saw the ground grow closer. It was all she could do to move her sword arm out of the way, unwilling for her end to be that upon her own sword.

But she never met the ground and found herself held up by two arms.

“d’Artagnan?”

The laugh in her ear was not d’Artagnan’s.

“No but your Musketeer sends his regards,” said Milady de Winter. “Now, come along my dear, you have a very valuable package to deliver.”

**

Their two horses came to a slow stop outside of a small house. Even before the end times had crept through France, it was obvious that the house had seen better days. The four walls were barely holding each other up, let alone the poor excuse for a roof that sat upon them.

But shelter was shelter and more importantly…

“Constance,” Milady said softly, as if calling to a lost child not a woman grown. She stood next to the younger woman’s horse, hands held high. “Please. We are running out of time.”

The woman in question stared blankly down from atop the horse, clutching the squalling bundle tightly in her arms. “N-no. You … I do not trust you. You have done such terrible things …” She swayed forward and Milady winced, worried that Constance would toppled the wrong way off the horse.

Milady agreed, “I have done terrible things.” She shifted, her arms growing tired. “But always with my best interest at heart. And you can trust me on this, Constance - this has my best interest at heart. Now, please, pass me the Dauphin.”

Constance shook her head and gripped the child tighter in her arms. “The world keeps going dark,” she whispered. “It’s taking an awfully long time time for the sun to come back.” She turned her head and managed to focus on Milady. “Lie to me. Tell me I am not … I am …”

“I was always a terribly good liar,” Milady said. As Constance passed down the child, she continued, “You will be fine, my dear. Now, come down - slowly! Slowly, there you are.” She leaned forward, as close as she dared, and fixed eyes with the dying woman. “Inside you will find d’Artagnan.”

“You lie.” But Constance was already moving forward, arms out in front to guide her in her failing light.

Milady’s lips twisted. “Not in this. Not now. I promise you, your Musketeer waits for you inside.” She stepped back and watched as Constance stumbled to the door, calling and crying out for the man she believed was inside. “There you are, that’s a girl. Well done.”

Turning back, she headed to her own horse again. She had a ship to catch.


	3. Chapter 3

The ship that sat in the harbor was small and battered. More importantly, it was alone. The normally busy harbor sat empty except for the lone vessel, empty of all the large ships that brought in cargo and the smaller ships that set out for fishing. In fact, the entire village sat empty, as if the people who had lived in it had simply ... walked into the ocean. Or been swept away by the hand of God.

Milady approached the gangway and stood quietly, cradling the Dauphin to her chest. The minutes ticked slowly by before she finally spotted someone on deck and she sighed in unexpected relief.

She and Aramis watched each other warily as she approached but she didn’t board the vessel. Instead, she set the future of France on the gangway and backed away. “Take him to England,” Milady advised, adjusting the scarf around her face. “What is left of my spies say they appear to be able to keep the plague at bay.” If not wholly, then better than their own country. 

Aramis had wasted no time in scooping up the - his - child and holding him closely, the look of relief achingly visible. “Why would they let us in? We’ll be coming from the nation of the dead.”

She smirked under the cloth. Idiots, the lot of them, she thought, spying a glimpse of Porthos with a crossbow for a brief second. “Because the future King of France appears to be immune. As does his father…”

Aramis grimaced and she laughed, hands spread. “Do not blame me for the divine intervention, Aramis. Simply be grateful that you three still live and that you come with a bargaining chip of great value.”

She thought then of the irony of the heir to the French crown being immune because he was, in truth, a bastard child. Once, in the before days, this would have been useful ammunition to arm herself with.

Now, Milady simply felt tired.

Taking a deep breath, Aramis visibly steeled himself, and then asked, “The others …” Porthos shook his head but the other man forced himself on. "d’Artagnan and Athos? They were alive when we last saw them."

The expression on Milady’s face told the story but her tongue spun another one. “Safe but unable to travel at this time. When they are well, we shall join you.”

“What, no attempt to come on board? To go to safety?” Porthos snorted from his position. “Seems rather unselfish of you.”

She shrugged and turned back towards her horse. “Perhaps you simply do not understand what being selfish really means.”

It was Porthos, surprisingly, that called her back. “We’ll wait. Stupidly, perhaps, but we’ll wait. Tides all wrong to go out so you’ve got a few hours.”

Milady couldn’t bring herself to answer as she rode away.

**

The house was still and quiet when she entered and Milady made a sound that was part defeat and part grateful when she spotted the bed with two bodies upon it. She picked up a blanket and spread it over d’Artagnan and Constance, the one body cold to the touch and the other feverish but stiff.

“I do not lie all the time,” she said to the body of the young woman. “Just when it suits me.”

Milady turned to the other bed and jumped slightly as the other body let out a bloodied cough. The eyes were barely open, the face around them swollen to the point where she might not have recognized him on the street but the eyes…

Oh yes, she would always remember Athos’ eyes.

She knelt next to him and arranged his blanket, wondering at his ability to hang on. “Stubborn to the end,” Milady quietly cried, fingers brushing his hair away from his feverish forehead.

What was there for her now? Her spy network had collapsed. The husband she had loved, hated, loved again lay dying at her feet. _France_ was simply a rotten corpse that hadn’t realized it was dead yet.

The past was dead. The present was taking it’s last, pitiful breath. And the future…

Her hands were steady as they reached up to the cloth bound to her face. Perhaps by some fluke of nature she was as immune as Aramis and his child. Or perhaps it had been luck and skill that kept her alive. 

If she were brave enough, she would tear down the cloth and kiss Athos one last time. Join him in his last slumber and let the world live or die as it pleased. What place did she have in it? Pull down the cloth, breath in the deadly air and join her husband. It had once been her greatest desire. To be reunited, to be happy.

There was no happily ever after here but should she not take it if was the nearest thing they would ever get?

Milady thought of the two idiots and the child on the ship. She thought of Constance, dead behind her, and of Athos dying in front of her.

Her hands were steady as they dropped to her lap and she sighed, cursed and cried all at once.

For she realized that if she were to die now, in this place, what mark would her death leave on the world? The world would live or die as it pleased but Milady would be in it for just a while longer. Perhaps it wasn't time to be selfish and take the easy, lonely way out.

Besides, there was a displaced King to help raise...


End file.
